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Conservationist and writer Carl Safina visiting a walrus colony on Amsterdamøya, Albert I Land, northwest coast of Svalbard. Dr. Safina was invited to sail with Greenpeace to bear witness to the changing climate in the Arctic and the impacts of industrial fishing on the marine environment. Credit: Christian Åslund / Greenpeace

Hello and thanks for visiting; welcome.

In my writing I explore our relationship with the living world—and how it could be better. My more recent work also probes how free-living animals experience life.

For some reason I’ve always loved things that are alive. Especially wild places and free-living animals on land and in the sea and sky.

Until I was ten years old, I lived in Brooklyn where my father raised canaries in our apartment and I raised homing pigeons in the yard. After that I grew up around New York’s Long Island coast where I loved wild creatures, small boats, fishing, and camping in the remaining woods. Watching the places I loved disappear turned me into a conservationist.

So I went to college and grad school and studied behavior and ecology of seabirds, fishes, and hawks and earned a PhD in Ecology. Over the years my work has changed. First it was research on the ecology and behavior of wild animals. Then I immersed in ocean conservation (helping lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, rewrite U.S. federal fisheries law, work toward international conservation of tuna, sharks, and other fishes, and help achieve passage of a United Nations global fisheries treaty). Since then I’ve turned increasingly to writing books and articles, for the power in words, to help make a case for life on Earth.

From all I’ve seen, my main conclusion is that at this point in history, nature and human dignity require each other. Where wild places are destroyed, wild animals lost, and the world degraded and polluted, not only is that itself a great loss for the world, but for people in degraded places it becomes almost impossible to maintain a dignified existence.

My not-for-profit is The Safina Center, a unique collective which is the creative end of the conservation-group spectrum. I’m the inaugural holder of the Endowed Chair for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University.

What drives my work is a devotion to free-living things and wild places. And what drives that devotion is my deep love and wonder for the living world.— Carl Safina

Humpback whale “spy-hopping” out of the waters of the Great South Channel near Martha’s Vineyard. The whale is taking a look at the whale watchers aboard the Coastal Research and Education Society of Long Island’s (CRESLI) Viking Starship whale-watching vessel. Credit: Carl Safina

Tim, a fully mature male elephant in Kenya, has survived several attacks by humans and has been helped by other humans. Credit: Carl SafinaNear my home, a Great-horned owl and chick (and a flying starling) in an unlikely nesting spot. Credit: Carl Safina

PRAISE FOR BEYOND WORDS

“Once in a long while, a book is published that felicitously combines lambent writing with dazzling facts, while also illuminating our knowledge….Beyond Words by Carl Safina…is one of these exemplary books.” – The Washington Post

TWO MILLION VIEWS AND COUNTING…

“What are animals thinking and feeling?” I discuss this important question in my TED Talk, which has surpassed the two-millionth view mark!